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Elizabeth Kuipers awarded OBE in New Year Honours

Posted on 02/01/2018

The Institute of Psychiatry Psychology & Neuroscience at King’s College London is delighted to announce that Elizabeth Kuipers, Professor Emerita of Clinical Psychology, has been awarded an OBE for services to clinical research, treatment and support for people with psychosis, in the New Year Honours List 2018.

Professor Emerita Kuipers OBE is world renowned for her research and clinical work focusing on developing, evaluating and improving psychological interventions for people with psychosis and their caregivers. These interventions, family intervention for psychosis (FIp) and cognitive behavioural therapy for psychosis (CBTp) are NICE recommended treatments in the NHS. Professor Emerita Kuipers OBE was the previous chair of the 2009 NICE Schizophrenia guideline update and was chair of the NICE guideline update for Schizophrenia and Psychosis 2014. She is a Senior Investigator Emerita in the faculty of the National Institute for Health Research.

Professor Emerita Kuipers OBE said: ‘I was surprised and delighted that the work I have been involved in is being noted in this way. Our interventions have enabled many people with psychosis and their carers to manage symptoms more positively and I am pleased to have been able to contribute to their recovery.'

Elizabeth’s research interests include evaluation of treatment trials in psychosis; family intervention and individual cognitive-behaviour therapy; cognitive processes in delusions and hallucinations; burden of care in psychosis; expressed emotion in carers, including staff carers; staff stress in mental health settings.

She is a Fellow of the British Psychological Society and has received two Lifetime Achievement Awards. She gained the Shapiro award for eminence in Clinical Psychology and was elected Academician of the Social Sciences at the Academy of Social Sciences.

Elizabeth has and continues to be committed to the advancement of women in science, indeed, one of her Lifetime Achievement Awards was a Women in Science and Engineering (WISE) Award. Elizabeth was the inaugural Chair of the IoPPN Athena SWAN Self Assessment Team, leading the Institute to win an Athena SWAN Silver Award in 2015.

Professor Ian Everall, Executive Dean and Head of Faculty at IoPPN at King's, said: ‘This is a tremendous achievement by Elizabeth to receive an OBE in the Queen’s New Year’s Honours; it is certainly highly deserved and a wonderful reflection of all her great work and contributions to research, treatment and the support of people with psychosis.’

Other awardees across King's include: Dr Brooke Rogers, Reader in Risk and Terror, was awarded an OBE for services to Academia and Government; Professor Andrew Shennan, Women’s Health, has been awarded an OBE for services to Maternity Care; and Dr Sarah Stringer Honorary Lecturer, King’s College London, and founder of Extreme Psychiatry, who was awarded a British Empire Medal for services to Psychiatry and Equality in Mental Healthcare. King’s alumnus Michael Morpurgo has received a knighthood for services to Literature and charity and Sir Christopher Geidt, Chairman of King’s College London, has been appointed Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath (GCB).

The European Union's Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation programme has given R-Link €7.7m for a cohort trial of lithium initiation, the results of which could provide people with bipolar disorder and clinicians better and more accurate information to make appropriate decisions regarding prescription of lithium.

The Duchess of Cambridge today visited the Maurice Wohl Clinical Neuroscience Institute at King's College London to find out more about the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience's (IoPPN) pioneering 'bench to bedside' perinatal mental health research and to meet leading scientists in the area.